What Triggers " [Translate This Page] " ?

joebert

Fart Bubbles

Posts: 13506

Loc: Florida

3+ Months Ago

I was just looking through a site:domain.com SERP for one of my sites and came across quite a few instances where Google has placed a [Translate This Page] link beside the results, even though they're already in English with the exception of a couple of words on some pages. If I click the link, it just gives me the unaltered page in English.

I looked at my HTTP headers, and I'm not currently sending any Content-Language headers, nor do I have the <meta> equivalent in my HTML source. The language is specified in the <html> element though.

The only pattern I can see in the results Google attaches this to, is that the page title includes one or two non-English words. For instance "Vide Guerra" seems to trigger it.

My best guess is that the absence of any Content-Language headers leaves Google to try guessing the language, and however it's doing that seems to work on a "find a non-English word and flag it all" basis.

I'm going to try sending Content-Language headers with en and see what happens.

joebert

Fart Bubbles

Posts: 13506

Loc: Florida

3+ Months Ago

Getting Apache to send a Content-Language header is easy enough with mod_mime and AddLanguage available.

It might get complicated with multiple languages or something other than *.html files.

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9105

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

So did setting the Content-Language header resolve the problem with the translate this page link coming up?

joebert

Fart Bubbles

Posts: 13506

Loc: Florida

3+ Months Ago

I believe it did, so far.

I've got category pages with similar titles, the only difference being a pattern of "Title Text (# of #)". In some cases the only part of the content that changes, is some displayed images.

When I looked just now I found instances of those pages having similar titles both with and without the translation link on them. If I remember right, these category pages each had the translation link before.

There is one specific page, with "Vide Guerra" in the title, that still has the translate link beside it in the title. Once that or all of the other affected category pages drops the translation link, I'll be more confident that it worked.

Unfortunately my pages are set to NOARCHIVE, so I don't think I can check a cache for a timestamp on these pages.

joebert

Fart Bubbles

Posts: 13506

Loc: Florida

3+ Months Ago

I just went through 46 SERPs and now the only result which still has a translation link appended is the one for the page I've been watching to make up my mind whether it worked or not!

joebert

Fart Bubbles

Posts: 13506

Loc: Florida

3+ Months Ago

After 2 months I'm still seeing one single result with a "translate this page" link beside it.

My thinking at the moment is that sending the Content-Language header did tell Google which language the page is written in and has stopped the translation link from displaying. This one odd-ball result has to simply be a page that Google hasn't revisited since the change.